Shaping Up: When the student is ready ...

Author Christine McDowell isn't a psychologist and has no degrees. She's just, she says, "someone who got it right atnad wants to share that."John Kenney
/ montreal gazette

Christine McDowell at home in the Pointe Claire area of Montreal Wednesday, June 27, 2012. She has written a book called You're Not Broken You Need to Harness Your Inner Power.John Kenney
/ montreal gazette

MONTREAL - The first thing one notices when speaking to Christine McDowell, at least for me, anyway, is her energy.

You can literally feel her positive energy.

It’s quite something.

But she didn’t always come across that way, as she aptly points out.

“If you had spoken to me five years ago, I would not have sounded the way I do today.”

Because, she says, we change, we are not who we were, we evolve.

“Hopefully we become unstuck.”

The fiftysomething West Island life coach and realtor has written a book (You’re Not Broken: You Need to Harness Your Inner Power; Manor House Publishing).

Her goal with the book is to help people change their thoughts and beliefs about themselves, and by doing so, ultimately change their lives.

At least, if they want to.

“Some people are very happy where they are, and that’s great.”

But in her role as a real estate agent, she says 90 per cent of the clients she has met were in a place of chaos.

“They were usually in a situation of either divorce or death or sudden change, and they really did not know where to go.”

Exactly where McDowell once was.

And having been through it was where the catalyst to write a book began.

It’s her own personal journey to a better place, and she says “If it helps just one person, then that’s why I wrote it.”

McDowell is not a psychologist and has no fancy degrees, but rather is “someone who got it right and wants to share that.”

In the opening paragraph, she recants being labelled a “dummy” by her Grade 4 teacher and forced to sit in the “Dummy Pen” at school.

All because she was a weak speller.

In one very sad story, she recounts the horror of a spelling bee. When she failed to spell a word correctly, the teacher told her, in front of the class: “You’re so stupid, I gave you an easy word.”

It was heartbreaking.

McDowell wrote: “Here was an adult, a person I was supposed to respect and look up to for guidance confirming that I was a good-for-nothing idiot. Children don’t know what is right or wrong, and if an adult is telling them something, it HAS to be true. Educators didn’t know any better in those days, I suppose, but it was brutal for me.”

And once she had that label, it was very hard for her to get away from it. Other children teased her, she was picked on and, far worse, she became to believe those things.

For years, she suffered from insecurity, had low self- esteem and was, as she would put it now, in chaos.

It was only in her 30s that McDowell embarked upon a gradual journey of discovery.

She wanted to figure out how to be happy.

And she has done just that.

She is absolutely happy these days, and in her book she tells you in her frank, no-nonsense way how to begin

But it involves a lot of work. At its most basic, you have to start with loving yourself.

“We live in a society that tells us we are broken” she says. “We’re not perfect if we don’t have the big house or the fancy car or the perfect body – who are ‘they’ to say that?”

She says we are brainwashed to look for other people’s approval on every level. “Just stop doing that!” she says emphatically. “Learn to trust in yourself.”

McDowell says there is no right or wrong to anything.

You have to decide for yourself what is right or wrong.

Problem is, she says, we let our egos get in the way.

“We don’t live in the moment, we’re always someplace else in our minds.”

Would it not be wonderful if every person on this planet loved themselves, McDowell asks. No judgment, no hatred.

“It really is that simple, but sadly it doesn’t work that way.”

So she encourages her readers to start with themselves.

“Not to hold judgment on yourself, know that the universe has your back and stop beating yourself up, stop trying to live up to other peoples’ expectations of you and create your own.”

The book has a few exercises to help get you started.

Her top three practices?

Love yourself: Do whatever it takes to become your best friend.

Gratitude: Grab a pen and write down 20 things you’re grateful for; it might give you a new perspective on your life and will certainly help you focus on what you have and not on what you don’t.

Live consciously: Start saying “now” every time your thoughts run rampant – especially the negative ones.

One of McDowell’s favourite expressions is: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

Which goes well with her fundamental belief that we are all teachers and we are all students.

“We’re here to learn and we’re here to teach, we all have our own messages.”

Christine McDowell’s book, You’re Not Broken: You Need to Harness Your Inner Power, is available at Amazon.ca

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